untitled
by zhuu
Summary: AU Young Dracula fic where Erin trained with the most ferocious of the slayers, under the worst possible circumstances. Erin/Vlad, Bertrand/OC
1. Chapter 1

"You don't have anything to fear from the dead."

At least, that's what her mum had told her as she stood quivering at her dad's funeral, tears dripping off the point of her chin like silver. She'd stroked Erin's hair and crooned in a voice usually reserved for bedtime lullabies. This was before they'd learned the truth; it had been _vampires_ rather than thugs in Nottingham that left him bleeding all over the cold concrete in a dark, dirty backstreet.

That had been rather a hard truth to process. Mum hadn't handled it well at all, but she was convinced enough to send both her children off to what the lady with the mocha-coloured skin and business suit had convinced her was a special boarding school for victims of the undead.

Now, that sounds rather a lot more sinister that it was, really. None of the pupils were _undead_, in fact, they were far from it.

Ryan had fit in straight away – older than her and more willing to get involved. He was twelve and she was ten and he understood more clearly what had happened. He needed revenge and didn't care how he might acquire it… but Erin was always more in tune with her morals. When they practiced throwing stakes from a ten-foot distance she cheered along with all the rest when one sunk pointy-end first into the chest of a crudely erected vampire with monstrous, bloody fangs but her heart skipped beats and it was always hard to keep one of those jaw splitting smiles on her face.

She was taught that they were monsters, things to be despised and dispatched of quickly. She was taught of all the heinous crimes they had committed against poor, weak, innocent humans and slowly she felt a hazy iron shield erecting itself over her heart.

Naturally she was a compassionate little creature; at home she had been drawn to broken things, so that she could patch them up and tend to them and watch them knit carefully back together until she could set them free, a blackbird with a broken wing, a poorly hedgehog, even a tiny little lamb she found lost and shivering on a back road on the walk home from school. Naturally, she is a compassionate little thing; but these things can be fixed.

The day she saw the lady with the mocha-coloured skin and the business suit again was when everything changed:

"Erin," the sound snaps her out of her daydream, "there is someone to see you in the head's office," she'd been rolling a pencil between her finger and thumb and staring out of the windows (her teacher always told her she needed to get her head down out of the clouds), so she smiles sheepishly and ducks her head as if in apology.

"Yes miss," she says quickly, trying not to scrape her chair against the floor when she stands, and pushing her things off the table into her bag in a most effective manner.

Quick reflexes, and all that.

Ryan, her older brother, is waiting outside the office when she arrives, his elbows on his knees and his chin in his hands. He looks… fierce, determined, though he quickly straightens up and grins when he sees her coming. She sits down opposite him, and for a quiet moment they stare at each other in that suspicious, knowing way that only siblings can.

"This is something serious," Ryan confides, worrying at his bottom lip with his teeth, "it's the woman with the business suit. From the funeral."

"Mm," she agrees, nodding her head before examining her fingernails (a nervous habit), "what do you think it is though? Oh, god, I hope mum's okay…" Erin can't think what else this unexpected visit might be about – her brother is nineteen now, about the age to undertake his first mission, and he's eager enough, but why would she be called along as well? And what purpose does the business suited woman serve? She groans a little in confusion, and worry, and wishes Ryan would come over and slip his arm around her shoulder like he had in the old days.

"I'm sure mum's fine, Erin, don't worry about silly things like that," but how could she not, and how was it silly? It was downright terrifying! It's her turn to chew solemnly on her lower lip and the silence consumes the two of them, falling down like a red velvet curtain to a stage.

"Ryan, Erin, you can go in now," the young, blonde secretary sitting behind a computer screen tells them disinterestedly, perpetually more interested in what was happening on Facebook than with any of the students.

They cast confused sidelong glances at each other, then stand and enter the room, Erin following meekly behind her brother. The room is empty but for the business suited woman, looking perfect and demure with not a hair out of place at the end of the table.

"Please, sit," she tells them in a lightly accented voice, her hands folded neatly atop a stack of papers, "it is nice to see you two again, though I had hoped we wouldn't meet so soon," and neither of them can tell where she comes from. Her accent isn't English in any way, though there's a hint of Irish… Erin hears American and Ryan hears African and both of them hear a bit of Russian, "nor under such unfortunate circumstances."

She smiles then, and Erin is worried. It's a smile that could be likened to a crocodile, to a switchblade.

"Introductions must be made though, of course, silly me," she continues pleasantly, with just a hint of gravity lingering under her breath, "you'll have to excuse my bad manners, I have not been in… polite company for quite a while now. I am Rhiannon Delgado, current acting chairperson for Slayers International, in particular the South America branch. You might wonder what I want with the two of you, and it is merely this; I wish to inform of your father's killers' whereabouts… we have reason to suspect that the clan responsible for your father's death are currently residing somewhere in North Wales. If you wish to further investigate the matter you will be granted full leave from your educational duties to track them."

Rhiannon stops with a neat little puff of breath (that goes perfectly with every other aspect of her), and when Erin looks over at her brother nervously, his eyes are narrowed and flaming and she knows she would never be able to dissuade him from this… she doesn't know what else to call it but _suicide mission_.

As if she notices the concern and apprehension on Erin's face, the older woman begins to talk again, in her voice as smooth as coffee beans or butter; "I understand you are very young to undertake this mission, Erin, even by my standards," (neither of them understand the reference of course – Rhiannon Delgado is an enigma at the best of times) "but slayers we are, and I understand the thirst we have for revenge."

Erin thinks she makes them sound just like the monsters they are fighting, but she keeps her thoughts to herself, and squeezes Ryan's hand under the table. When he speaks, his voice squeaks and he's close to slapping his palm against the wood table in his fervour.

"Of course we want this mission! Right, Erin?"

He looks over at her and his eyes are just so big and bright that she can't refuse him. She smiles thinly and nods assent.

"Of course we do."


	2. Chapter 2

Rhiannon Delgado comes with them.

She's not wearing the business suit anymore; her hair isn't hanging in those perfect, black silken threads. She looks svelte and dangerous with her hair scraped back off her face in a long ponytail, the tight black pants and tank top, the trainers that look more suited for running round the PE hall than for combat. Ryan had asked her about her lack of body armour, and she'd looked down at him like she was patronising and said, "I like to be able to move if things get up close and personal," and the siblings had shared a look that meant way more than _what have we gotten ourselves into_?

They couldn't have expected much else; two kids so green behind the ears they could have been coloured in with Sharpies. They weren't going to just be set loose on a family of Vamps without the proper supervision.

Ryan drives the Landrover in a stony silence and the two girls sit sprawled on the backseat, Erin staring dolefully out of the window and Rhiannon cleaning out a handgun with the utmost precision.

"I thought bullets were useless against vampires," Ryan's voice sounds suspicious but still somehow very eager, he's eyeing the way Rhiannon's hands move over her weapon like she'd know every single inch of gunmetal in detail, blindfolded. Her lips twist into that switchblade smile again, and she raises her eyebrows at him.

"Not if they're wooden," she says, and his eyes drop away from the rear view mirror, and then (as if to rub it in even further), "and you can shoot a moving target within a kill zone diameter of twenty centimetres nine times out of ten."

Erin coughs awkwardly with her fist pressed up against her mouth.

"Where are you from?" she asks sweetly, in an attempt to break the tension that has fallen all around them.

"Bolivia," comes the answer, short, sharp and to the point. Erin gets the picture. She shuts up and continues looking miserably out of the window.

The countryside flashes past, turning from slick, urban grey to the endless green she remembers from her childhood. But this is Wales, not Hampshire, and they're here to kill vampires, not eat picnics and swim in sweet, bubbling brooks. She swallows thickly and Ryan turns up the radio so all that she can hear is pop music and the terrified throb of her heart.

Rhiannon is the first to open the door when the jeep stops. She swings her legs out and stands there for a moment, just listening to the sound of the wind rustling the leaves. Her mouth is pale, a tight, concerned line, and she reaches into the car to retrieve a garlic-infused stake before looking sternly at the two children she'd brought along, for reasons unknown (to them, at least) and says, "wait in the car until I return."

Ryan stays put, though Erin can see crinkle on the bridge of his nose that means he's close to disobeying direct orders; his hand lingers on the key in the ignition before he pulls it loose and tosses it over his shoulder to his sister sitting stock still in the back of the car.

"Sit in the drivers seat, Erin. Be ready," she reaches for his arm, to try and talk some sense into him, but he pulls away and snarls and says, "these monsters killed our _father_, Erin! They are an abomination, and they will not last much longer. Stay here, be ready, and keep safe."

The slam of the door sounds like goodbye.

She doesn't know why, exactly, but her throat feels torn and tender, and her eyes are sharp with tears. They roll down off her chin like they'd done at her father's funeral, no matter how many times she rubs them away with her sleeve. She doesn't know how long she sits there, twiddling the key between her fingers and watching for the slightest movement between the trees, but soon the light, their biggest defence, is fading fast. Twilight is approaching and the thought sets her heart off, so thunderous in the cave of her chest that it almost hurts.

Unarmed except for the garlic gel she can see on the dashboard, she feels painfully vulnerable, but she can't sit here and wait any longer. She takes the tube and squeezes the gel out onto her fingers, smears it all over any part of her exposed skin and hates her hands for trembling. When the car door slams behind her, birds skitter up out of a nearby oak tree with a flurry of feathered wings and ravens caw somewhere in the distance; it is all she can do to stifle the scream that comes unbidden to her mouth in the crook of her elbow and then, bashful, she creeps forward into the direction her companions had disappeared earlier.

The light is fading further, casting long shadows where her adversaries will attain the upper hand, so she skirts around them and keeps to the waning sunlight, even though it takes her much longer this way than if she'd walked straight. Erin is not fearless… but when the sound of fighting splits through the silence of the forest, she finds she is grateful rather than worried, and heads toward it with a newfound determination crinkling her brow.

She sees her brother collapsed by the foot of a great tree, and Rhiannon fighting hand to hand with a snarling beast close-by. The snarling beast is shorter than the slayer, with shiny dark hair that is almost impeccable, and skin as pale as alabaster – a _girl, _not much older than Erin by the looks of things. It appears as if Rhiannon is fighting to wound, not to kill, and though she wonders why, it is more important in that instance to help her brother.

Erin falls to her knees in front of him. With short, rasping breaths he clutches a wad of something blood red to his neck and when she pulls it back with tender fingers, she gasps involuntarily and their eyes lock.

Her brother, he grins up at her sheepishly and says, "I got one, Erin, a proper, fully grown one."

She smiles weakly through the tears, and takes his chin in one hand. The other she uses to stroke gentle arcs on his forehead, as their mother would have done when he was a child.

"I'm so proud of you," she whispers, "you're an out-and-out slayer now, bro, completed your first mission," and they must be of scant comfort, these hopeless words, but he smiles nonetheless and there is blood between his teeth.

"It bit me… the one with the black hair. I was too distracted. Rhiannon told me she'd kill it for me… has she killed it?"

When Erin turns around to check, there is no trace of anything, no sign of what had occurred just moments ago except for splatters of blood in the dirt, sprayed up the trees.

"Yes," she lies seamlessly, and continues to stroke the wet hair back off his forehead.

"She's a machine," he laughs and chokes, splutters, licks at the blood lining his cracked lips, "no fear. The one I killed, it said 'if it isn't the damaged one', and then they told me that I stunk of fear, I reeked so much they could smell me from miles away… but Rhiannon… she didn't… find out, Erin, find out how to do it, and they'll never stop you."

A hand clamps down onto Erin's shoulder, the fingers digging ruthlessly into the cartilage and the girl screams, reels forwards into her brother so that he grunts and hisses in pain. _Sorry, sorry, sorry_ she wants to say, but she's glancing behind her to see a figure drenched in shadow, blood and… _oh_.

"Rhiannon," she breathes, in relief, and scrambles away from Ryan so than he can make himself comfortable again, "what happened?"

"There were too many of them for me to kill alone," she says, shrugging her shoulders in indifference, "your brother proved helpful at first, but he should have stayed in the car like I told him," she knelt on the other side of him, and pulled a stake from where it was strapped efficiently to her thigh. Erin's heart drops, then races cruelly in her chest. Without a thought for her own personal safety, she throws herself at the slayers abdomen and the two of them, the woman and the girl, go tumbling together into the dirt.

"No!" she shouts, the sound piercing the eerie tranquillity of the forest around them, "he's my brother!"

"And he's been bitten," Rhiannon tells her nonchalantly, standing and brushing the twigs and leaves from her body, "if we leave him here he will feel no remorse in killing you later, girl," and she pushes Erin to the side.

"Wait! _Wait! _Can't we take him back to base? There must be a cure, there must be!"

The slayer wants to feel sympathetic, she really does. She can imagine the way her heart would ache for this little girl with silvery tears rolling off her chin and her pale blonde hair, so sweet, so innocent, but she cannot. She sighs and holsters her stake.

"There is no cure," she doesn't mean to be so blunt, but the words come out edged like swords, "but as you wish, we shall leave him. Come."

And the slayer leads the little girl who screams desperately for her brother back to the jeep, where darkness falls like shrouds of silk pooling at their feet. The girl sobs and her chest heaves and twice she breaks free of Rhiannon's iron grip, to start back towards her brother where he lay beneath the great tree. The slayer retrieves the girl in one fell swoop, and when she bundles her into the back of the jeep she presses something sharp into Erin's wracking body, and she sleeps.


	3. Chapter 3

**INTERLUDE**

_1997, Bolivia_

The sun rises slowly above the veranda, so that early morning light streaks like slashes of pale paint across the delicate mocha of her legs as she lies in bed with her eyes half open and her eyelashes like pine needles brushing against her delicate cheekbones.

There is no sound but the sprinkle of water onto parched plants, the flowers her father insisted on having because they reminded him of home even if they needed rainstorms to flourish, and Rhiannon sighs and wriggles towards the edge of her bed. She is thirteen and pleased with herself, combing her silky hair back with her fingers, sitting there with her pyjamas short and adorned with silly cartoon faces. The girl drags her alarm clock towards her, and frowns. The numbers are flashing red, the way they do when there's been a power cut in the night (the reason for her absence from school, most of the time) but the sprinkler system wouldn't be working, if that had been the case.

Naturally a suspicious child, she stands and pads softly to the hallway. Her feet are silent on the ceramic tiles and when she reaches the bannister, she curls her fingers around it, and leans over to look into the entrance hall.

There is no one there. No sign of anything untoward. No maids dusting or polishing or mopping. None of her father's security men making small talk and unwrapping _salteñas_ that their wives had made the night before, their radios crackling with white noise every now and again.

"Mama," she calls, uncertainly, and her voice echoes through the marbled hallways as though she has been forgotten, "papa?"

There is no answer.

Rhiannon slips back into her room and closes the door behind her. She watches it darkly for a moment, with her hands on her hips, before leaning forwards and flicking the lock shut. She has been taught to take no chances.

She dresses quickly, with efficiency that she is sure her father would be proud of, if he could see her. When she is finished and wearing an unusual ensemble of tight black pants and an army green tank top, she sits on the edge of her bed to think. She can't make it to the armoury without crossing at least three major points of surveillance, and with the high probability that a stranger was watching the CCTV footage, she didn't want to be seen. That left scaling down the wall below her veranda – thick with ivy and latticed woodwork. She'd be making an escape without a weapon to hand, but it was better than sitting in her white-laced bedroom waiting for her father's adversaries (she was well versed in identifying his enemies) to come and take her.

She's always been proactive.

Like an assassin hiding in the shadows, she crawls commando-style to the edge of the veranda, and peeks through the slants between the stone handrails. And this how she see's the stacks of security officer uniforms piled up by the pool, one on the top of the other. At first she thinks they are just the clothes, but as she leans down and looks closer she sees the bodies are there… just floppy and empty, like wet paper. She wants to scream for her parents, and sob and cry and wail, but there is an escape to be made and she has been training for this moment her whole life.

She thinks about where she will go, as she shimmies down the wall, curling her fingers carefully into each handhold before looking for a foothold below. Her mother has family in the Congo – but are they safe from the renegade soldiers yet? Her father's family must be back in Russia, but they are shadows. He never spoke about them, at least not with her.

Her feet hit the paving stones, and she breathes a sigh of relief. Without a sidearm (the Glock that her father had taught her to dismantle, then put together in the dark in under a minute, and the days she spent hour after hour on the shooting range; her mother always had a sour look on her face, those days) she feels naked and vulnerable, but her ever growing suspicions are put to rest when she slips along the courtyard wall and makes for the back entrance.

All she feels next is a wave of heat and sharp, stinging sensations everywhere, all over her body like pins and needles. Her ears blow, and she's pushed violently forwards onto her front, so hard that her chin skims against the slabs and she can feel the skin peel back like orange peel. Lying there, whimpering, she wonders, who will save her now?

Those gentle hands that roll her over, so that she has to squint against the sun, whose are they?

"Papa?" she asks, her voice quivering and hopeful. Those gentle hands, they push her hair back from her bloodied, broken face and they are so cold against the boiling hot of her skin that she shivers. A face hovers above hers, the features blocked out by the sun, which casts a golden halo around the tight curls of the figures hair.

"No," the reply is soft, like a lullaby, in very accented Spanish, and she feels her heart drop. It is pacing so slowly in her chest that she considers the fact she might be dead, "you are safe now, child, be calm," and she is.

The darkness closes in on her and she sleeps.

When she finally wakes, after sleeping fitfully for weeks, it is dark in the hospital. Her eyes open easily without any light to squint against, though the slow beep of the heart monitor next to her head is irritating enough that within minutes of lying staring at the ceiling, she's ready to toss it out of the window. She tries dolefully to remember what happened and slowly she does, though it is without any lingering fears or panic.

What is wrong with me? She wonders, quite nonchalantly, why all of her fears seem so muted.

The door hinges creak, but she doesn't turn her head to look at the visitor to her room. Instead, she closes her eyes and tempers her breathing. Her chest rises and falls as if she is asleep, but the stranger chuckles under their breath and says in heavily accented Spanish, "I know that you are awake, little girl."

When she opens her eyes and tilts her head to the side, she sees the man with dark curly hair that she recognises from her dreams.

"It's you," she says under her breath, and it sounds as if she is disinterested, "what happened in the courtyard? Where are my mother and father?"

He laughs again, and moves to sit in the visitor's chair that she supposes has been left empty for days, while she occupied this room. A girl, she thinks, all alone in the world, now.

"Worse than the inquisition," he says as if amused, and lets his hand brush a wayward strand of her from her forehead, "you were caught in the tail end of an explosion, little girl-"

("Rhiannon," she interrupts, "my name is Rhiannon,")

"-you caught a piece of shrapnel in the back of your head," his hand moves to the bandage wrapped around her skull, and lingers there, an inch away from it, "you have suffered temporal lobe damage. The doctors don't know exactly what damage is done, not yet."

The girl has eyes like a does, and in the half-light they are wide and shining and dispassionate. She wriggles further up the pillows at her back, jostling her drip so that the needle snags and she should have winced at the feel of it, but she doesn't… just eyes the droplets of blood forming on the white plaster. If she was paying attention, she might have noticed the way the man recoiled from her like she had burnt him, but of course she hadn't, and when she turns her eyes to him again he has somewhat recovered himself, though his eyes are fixed firmly on the rise and fall of the line on her heart monitor.

"My parents?"

"Dead."

"Oh," she says, and her heart throbs, "how?"

"Killed," he replies, and their eyes lock; his are so dark that in this light it seems as if the whites of them are missing, "I killed them," and he laces his fingers around her throat. The heart rate monitor bleats on steadily, and though she chokes and splutters and pushes at his hand, those eyes stare right up at him just as they had done before.

"I thought it might be this," he says, and later she'd swear that she heard the smallest tinge of sadness there, "you're damaged," he removes his hand and she rubs tender circles into her skin, where purple bruises are already beginning to blossom.

"Who are you?" she rasps, as he stands and steps towards the door. His back stiffens as she asks the question, and he stares straight ahead, straight out of the door, away from her, but he replies so quietly that she has to strain to hear it.

"My name is Bertrand," he says.

"Bertrand," she echoes, the epitome of nonchalant, "French, isn't it? I will kill you, Bertrand."

"I believe you," he says softly, and leaves.


	4. Chapter 4

The piece of crap car is vital to the plan. Erin tries to remember that fact as she struggles with the ignition, turning the key again and again and pumping valiantly at the accelerator. Her heart should be throbbing wildly in her chest, but the liberal application of statis spray she'd doused herself with earlier blocks it out and instead all she can hear is the incessant whine of the engine and then an eerie silence. She slaps her palm against the leather steering wheel and presses her skull back into the headrest so hard that it almost hurts.

If the engine doesn't respond soon, she's buggered and the whole plan will be down the drain. Her neck itches, where they'd punctured her skin weeks earlier to allow the cuts to heal and scab over – everything had to look perfectly natural for this to work.

The engine wails, and bursts into life and with a joyous cheer that she half-regrets afterwards, she slips the car into first gear and the wheels spin and send gravel flying in every direction, a la fast and furious. Erin grins to herself as she drives along the long, empty country lanes into the forest where she knows Brandon and Ed are chasing the vampire that killed Ryan and was wounded so badly by Rhiannon that it would not be a fair fight at all, if it came down to it.

When she arrives at the farmyard, she knows she is too late, that the delay with the old engine had cost her valuable seconds. The girl with the alabaster skin and flawless black hair is stumbling across the concrete, tripping over her own feet and sending wisps of straw and specks of dirt into a farmyard typhoon.

"Get in!" her voice is a command, and she pushes the car door open as far as it will go, her eyebrows puckered in earnest, "what? Do you _want _to die? Get in!"

Erin can see the cogs turning over in the vampires mind, and she huffs an impatient breath, "they're coming!" that seems to do it, and the girl slips into the passenger seat. For a minute Erin can't see anything through the windshield; the smoke rising off the girls pale skin reminds her of a horse being shod and she wafts it away ineffectually with one hand before changing gear and wrenching the steering wheel sideways in a move that should have left them upside down in a ditch. Instead, she changes up a gear and they steadily gain speed.

"It's alright," Erin says, soft as butter, "I'm one of you, look," and she pulls her scarf down to show the bite marks on her neck, "don't be afraid," she continues, but stops as the girl beside her scoffs and wrinkles her nose.

"Afraid of you? Unlikely! But why aren't we burning up?"

"The car… it has a UV filter built in, we're safe."

"For now," the vampire says, the embodiment of morbid, "I'm Ingrid, thanks for the rescue. Very white-knight in shining armour."

"Erin," she replies, smiling tightly, "and it's my pleasure."

Silence. It surrounds them completely but somehow it sounds like laughter, mocking them straight to their faces. The engine is dead and slowly the sound of the road under the tyres comes to a stop.

"Oh, God, no," Erin's face is wrought with panic and she slaps the centre of the steering wheel again and again and again and wrenches the key in the ignition, "what an absolute piece of _crap_," she whines, and Ingrid tilts her head in what looks like a sign of agreement.

"I don't know anything about cars," she says in that haughty way of hers when she notices Erin looking at her sideways, "under better circumstances we have a much more efficient way of getting around."

_Bats_, of course, Erin had almost forgotten.

She chews anxiously on her bottom lip, and turns the key again.

"It's no good, it's not going to start. I'll have to try and fix it. There's a spanner under that seat, pass it to me, will you?" the other girl complies and Erin stands by the car bonnet with a huge chunk of steel in her hand. The only thing she knows to do with it is to use it as a bludgeon in the most unfortunate of circumstances, and as she stares at the interior workings of the engine, she finds that she wants to cry. The car needed to be a piece of shit, she knew that, but did it have to be _this _bad?

A car door slams, and Ingrid is by her side, smelling of sulphur and iron and it is all Erin can do not to wince away from her.

"Do you know what you're looking at?" she asks, her voice catching on it's own sarcasm, though there is a hint of earnestness in it, especially as she looks back into the darkness they'd come from, "they are not far behind us."

"…what's wrong with you?" Erin asks casually, pretending to fiddle with something in under the bonnet that turns out to be the radiator cap. She groans and replaces it, straightens up and joins her unlikely companion in staring out into the darkness.

Ingrid ignores the question. "There's no-one else coming to save us, is there? C'mon, you must have a brother, or something!"

It's a joke, but it stabs Erin in the heart like a serrated knife, and twists hard.

"Nope. Just me. What about you?"

A loaded question, one she knows the answer to very well. She spins the spanner around in her hands and glances up at Ingrid. Her face has changed from disinterested to seething and Erin blanches – she hadn't realised the hate in the family ran quite this deep. If this was what a simple, hazy mention of the chosen one meant, what kind of monster must he be?

But before their pitiful excuse for a conversation can continue, there is a rustle of wings and there is a boy standing in the light cast from the cars headlights, bold and straight-backed.

Erin presses herself closer to the car as if doing so will save her from the big, bad monster, and Ingrid smiles a superior little smile then turns to face the cloaked stranger.

"Hello brother, dearest, fancy seeing you here! Come to conduct a nice white-knight rescue of your own? It's a shame, though, that I don't need your help. I found my own way out," she dips a shoulder towards Erin, "you're too late to actually be of any assistance."

Panicking, Erin bolts forward, and cringes as the vampires eyes trail slowly from her shock of blonde hair to the toes of the trainers she's wearing.

"Um, sorry to butt in, but, actually, we _do _need some help. It's the car, y'see," she points at it, "it's broken down and neither of us know what we're doing, so it'd be, like, amazing if _you _did…" and she's so aware of both their eyes boring into her like drills. Ingrid's are dark and loathing, for the first time, and the boys are wide and interesting and not like she imagined them to be at all. He raises a hand and clicks his fingers, and there is something childish and playful about him in that instant.

"Try it now," he says, the smallest smile playing on the edges of his mouth and without a word she drops the bonnet and complies.

The car starts with the first twist of the engine and she can't help the grin that breaks out on her face. "It worked!" she says, though there is no one around to hear her. The two vampires are standing a little further off than they had been before, and she is left staring at them as they circle each other like rabid dogs, Ingrid snapping and snarling. That is, at least, until a ring of flames engulfs them and Erin squeaks in surprise before pressing herself back into the seat.

Let them play at being monsters, for now.

They didn't know what was coming.


	5. Chapter 5

There are tears dripping off the point of her chin, and her eyes are raw and rimmed with red. Something inside of him twists, when he sees her, and he reaches out with a mixture of pity and confusion scrawled all over the deathly pale lines of his face.

"It's not that bad," he says, but his voice wavers and he knows then that he sounds as uncertain as he feels. Perhaps it really _is _that bad, lying in a coffin in the dark thinking about your family and how you'll never lie out in the sun again, running your fingers through the grass and watching white, puffy clouds frolicking in the endless blue of the summer sky. Yes, he can almost feel the anguish coming off her in waves; and then, for a second… no, it's impossible. Vladimir clears his throat, and the little blonde girl looks up at him with her head tilted coquettishly to the side. "You get used to it," he says.

"I'll be fine," she tells him for the third time running, and adjusts the scarfs around her neck. He wonders what it looks like, and his fingers grip the edge of her borrowed coffin so tight that the knuckles turn whiter than his face. He imagines it long, and elegant and slender, and imagines his lips brushing over her pulse point, still and terrible and yet still somehow wonderful.

His imagination is running wild. It has been ever since she arrived with Ingrid, all careful smiles and meek, cautious words. Erin, he'd learned, was skilled in the art of not pissing anyone off. Something his sister would do well to learn from her – it was all he could do to stop their father from biting her head off every time she entered a room with that snide look on her face and a never ending supply of taunting insults. He thinks about finding that stupid monkey, to comfort the half-fang, but the idea seems ridiculous and childish as soon as it enters his mind and he scoffs inwardly at himself. He is boyish, still, but something in Erin's pale face and freckles (that he's sure will fade, soon) and her vulnerability (it hits him like a freight train, every single time he see's her) makes him want to act _manly_. He passes her in the corridor and she offers him one of those tight, wary smiles, and he wants to press her up against the wall and kiss her breathless.

He's not felt like this before, and it worries him. He can't concentrate on anything without a shock of yellow hair slipping into his minds eye. His father has noticed, and Ingrid as well, but they haven't bothered to bring the topic up just yet… his father most likely feels uncomfortable about the whole thing, and Ingrid is just waiting for an opportunity she could use, one that would hurt him most.

His sister drags him aside later, when the image of Erin crying in her pyjamas is still fresh in his mind, and sighs and clicks her tongue against the roof of her mouth.

"It's pathetic, Vlad, really. She's been here for what; a week, and you're already hopelessly besotted? She can tell, you know. At least try and act like you could care less."

He has nothing to say in reply; he merely juts out his jaw at an odd angle and pokes at the inside of his cheek with his tongue. His arms are folded defensively, and he's shocked when Ingrid folds a hand over his forearm in a gesture that's almost sisterly. When he looks up at her face, her dark eyes are a little hazy around the edges.

"I know… I like her too."

She leaves in a flurry of leather and the swish of her old, velvet cape, and he can still feel the imprint of her hand on his arm as he stands there, dithering.

When Bertrand freezes his art class, all he can think about is Erin. He'd woken up that morning with a hot face and sticky sheets, and in that moment, staring down at the old book with the skeleton gripping it like a claw, he'd felt all that shame come crashing back. She'd not done anything to lead him on; in fact, she went out of her way to avoid him.

He makes up his mind then, and Bertrand stays.

The telepathy lessons go well (Vlad has always had a talent with empathy, and all this probing into people's minds went hand in hand with that, if you looked at it the right way) and sometimes he finds himself pressing up against Erin's mind, just because it calls to him so strongly. It butts up against his even when they are at opposite ends of the house, and he wonders sometimes if she does it on purpose.

He'd breach the question with his tutor, but Bertrand had expressed an instant dislike for Erin, as though he smelt something distasteful on her skin. The slight downturn to his lips every time he saw her, or even heard her footsteps in the corridor above them warned Vlad off of any man-to-man discussions about the girl who occupied his thoughts more often than was probably healthy.

She is sitting in the library, curled around a leatherback book with an expression on her face that most people would find stupid – lips pouted, eyebrows furrowed, eyes dim and half closed… Vlad finds it endearing. He moves to sit next to her on the couch, and then notices the proximity that would leave them in and thinks better of it. He perches on the arm of the sofa and watches her face as she tears her eyes away from the print and looks at him gently, inquisitively. She has these big, brown doe-eyes that wobble slightly whenever she's worried, and a spatter of freckles across the bridge of her nose. Vlad inhales heavily and presses the palms of his hands into his lap, to steel himself.

"Are you alright, Erin? I mean really all right? I worry about you." He doesn't mean to sound so pathetic, but he does, and he watches as her face crumbles in an instant and her pretty pink lips tremble and knows that he had taken the right approach.

"No," she says, and drags a hand through her hair. It stands up all at odd ends, and for a second he aches to smooth it down and kiss her forehead, "of course I'm not alright. I'm dead." Her voice cracks in the middle and she folds forward from the waist, cradling her head in her hands.

He sits there on the arm of the sofa, very still, his face a mask of indifference. Silence falls down heavily around them, and he watches as she tries to compose herself. Those silvery tears are something of beauty, he thinks, and slides down onto the leather loveseat next to her. It is an old piece of furniture, and sagging in the middle, so that they either have to prop themselves up awkwardly or leave their bodies to press together in the middle of it. Her chest bobs, and he can feel her swallowing frantically to try and stop the tears that, he thinks, are quite natural.

"Let me tell you about a place called Stokely," he says, very softly, and they slide down into the crack of the sofa, so close that their thighs bridge the gap.


End file.
